Speaker Biographies Martha Davis Dean Martha Davis is the Associate Dean for Experiential Education at Northeastern University School of Law, and teaches Constitutional Law, US Human Rights Advocacy and Professional Responsibility. She is a faculty director for the law school s Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy and the NuLawLab. In 2015-2016, she held the Fulbright distinguished chair in human rights and humanitarian law at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute, Lund University, in Lund, Sweden, and she remains an affiliated scholar with the institute. She is also a member of the expert pool for WaterLex, a Geneva-based development organization that advocates for water and human rights. Professor Davis has written widely on human rights, women s rights, and social justice issues. Noel Didla Professor Noel Didla teaches English at Jackson State University in Jackson, MS. She believes in humanizing learning spaces and processes. Her philosophy of life is informed by Freire s pedagogical approach & Baker s vision. As a Dalit woman, she believes in honest sharing of herself and her cultural complexities to be in community. Her values are rooted in her dalitness. Professor Didla is the cofounder of Cooperation Jackson and the Jackson Human Rights Institute. She serves on the core committee of the Coalition for Economic Justice and is a task force member of the Jackson People s Assembly. Professor Didla is a founding member of the Matti Collective, a group of South Asian women in the Deep South that center gender and racial equity through their community work with black and other brown women. Shulamith Koenig Ms. Shulamith Koenig is the Founding President of PDHRE, the People s Movement for Human Rights Learning, formerly known as People s Decade for Human Rights Education, which she founded in 1988. Her work focuses on creating a political culture based on human rights, and enabling women and men to participate in the decisions that determine their ability to live in dignity in their communities. Ms. Koenig worked successfully to have the UN declare a Decade for Human rights education (1995-2004). In 1997, to answer the imperatives of Human Rights Learning for all women, men, youth, and children around the world, Ms. Koenig and the PDHRE International network started developing Human Rights Cities. She received the 2003 UN Prize in the field of Human rights. For more than 20 years Ms. Koenig worked as an industrial engineer. She and her husband Jerry manufacture water saving products. for irrigation and water systems.
Rebecca Landy Ms. Rebecca Landy is the Human Rights Outreach and Advocacy Manager at the US Human Rights Network, where she coordinates the work of the network to grow and deepen the engagement of grassroots and national groups in using international, regional, and domestic mechanisms to bolster human rights accountability in the United States. She has served as the Human Rights Advocate at Friends of Conscience, working for the freedom of political prisoners in China. She worked at the international human rights program of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and helped in the submission of a complaint to the International Criminal Court and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. Rebecca graduated from the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 2008, where she was an Urban Morgan Human Rights Fellow. Dorotea Manuela Ms. Dorotea Manuela was a pediatric registered nurse, a co-founder of the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, and the first Black Latino Woman to serve as Executive Director of a Labor Union in Massachusetts (Community, Educational and Social Agency Employees CESAE). She was also a co-chair of the Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Coalition. Dorotea was the coordinator of the Women s Awareness Resource Project HIV-AIDS Educational Latino and Caribbean Program and the Ryan White Title II Planning Council. She is currently the chairperson of Haymarket People s Fund. As a lifelong activist, she has been, and continues to be, involved in Human Rights, working class struggles, and Liberation movements. She is also heavily involved in the Color of Water project at Mass. Global Action. Suren Moodliar Mr. Suren Moodliar founded and helps coordinate encuentro 5, a movement-building space in Boston. He is also a coordinator of Massachusetts Global Action and several of its projects including the Majority Agenda Project, the Color of Water, and the Du Bois Forum. Previously he was a coordinator of the North American Alliance for Fair Employment and served as the program coordinator of the Boston Social Forum. He has a background in union and immigrant organizing. His writing has focused on the World Social Forum and networks as agencies and spaces for social change.
Kenneth Neubeck - Professor Ken Neubeck retired in 2003 as a Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Connecticut and has lived in Eugene, Oregon, since that time. The author of When Welfare Disappears: The Case for Economic Human Rights (Routledge, 2006), Professor Neubeck is a long-time member of the Eugene Human Rights Commission and serves as its chair. The Commission is charged with encouraging the local implementation of the full range of human rights found in the Universal Declaration. At the national level Professor Neubeck is on the Policy Committee of Housing Not Handcuffs which has launched a nation-wide campaign to end criminalization of homelessness and support more funding of permanent housing. He is a member of the U.S. Human Rights Network and serves on the State and Local Coordinating Committee of the national Human Rights at Home Campaign that advocates for the implementation of universal human rights in the United States by all levels of government including the local municipal level. Mai Abdul Rahman - Dr. Mai Abdul Rahman is a post doc fellow and associate researcher at Howard University s School of Education. She received her doctorate degree in Educational Leadership and Policy from Howard University s School of Education, graduate degree (MA) in education from Trinity University, and an undergraduate degree (BA) in political science from Drake University. She is a lecturer, writer, researcher, and community advocate. She is a member of the DC Human Rights City s steering committee, which was established to ensure District of Columbia legislators follow up on their legislative promise (2008) to protect the human rights of city residents. Rachel Rosenbloom - Professor Rachel Rosenbloom teaches and writes in the area of immigration law and policy. Her recent scholarship has focused on the intersection of criminal law and immigration law, the possibilities and limits of transnational legal advocacy in advancing the rights of deportees, and the role of race and immigration in the historical development of U.S. citizenship law. Professor Rosenbloom was a fellow at the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Boston College, where she was the supervising attorney for the Center s Post-Deportation Human Rights Project. Prior to her legal career, Professor Rosenbloom was a research and advocacy associate at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, where she documented human rights violations based on sexual orientation, gender identity and HIV status.
Michael Santos Mr. Michael Santos is an attorney at the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty whose work focuses on advocating for access to education for homeless youth, through public education, impact litigation, and policy advocacy. Prior to joining the Law Center, Mr. Santos had a long history of working on the rights of low-income and underrepresented communities through the Department of Health and Human Services and various non-profit organizations. Most recently, he was a fellow at the Clinton Foundation where he worked on an initiative to decrease the upward trend of childhood obesity in the United States. Jackie Smith Professor Jackie Smith is professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research addresses the relationships between economic globalization, social conflicts, and popular struggles. She currently serves as the editor of the Journal of World-Systems Research, the official journal of the Political Economy of the World-System Section of the American Sociological Association. Professor Smith has written and edited numerous books and articles on transnational social movements and the global political economy, addressing questions about how diverse groups form alliances across race, class, and other divisions in order to advance social transformation. Her earlier work on the World Social Forum process shapes her current research agenda, which focuses on how global analyses, networks, and models of action are translated into local settings. She is involved locally in work with Pittsburgh s Human Rights City Alliance, and she serves on the Leadership Committee of the internet and media justice advocacy organization, May First/People Link. Professor Smith is an advocate for the right to communication and Open Access publishing and is part of the International Network of Scholar Activists. Cynthia Soohoo Professor Cynthia Soohoo is the Director of the Human Rights and Gender Justice Clinic at CUNY Law School. She is in expert on women s human rights, the human rights of youth in conflict with the law, and human rights advocacy in the United States. She supervises the clinic s work on reproductive rights and health, trafficking, and youth in the adult criminal justice system. Professor Soohoo was the Director of the U.S. Legal Program at the Center for Reproductive Rights. In addition to managing U.S. litigation and state advocacy work, she spearheaded and supervised the development of the Center s U.S. human rights advocacy and fact-finding work and the growth of its Law School Initiative. Professor Soohoo was the Director of the Bringing Human Rights Home Project, Human Rights Institute, Columbia Law School, and a supervising attorney for the law school s Human Rights Clinic. She has worked on U.S. human rights issues before U.N. human rights bodies, the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, and in domestic courts. Professor Soohoo practiced law at the firm Covington & Burling for six years and was co-counsel in the landmark Alien Tort Statute case, Doe v. Karadzic.
Joann Kamuf Ward Ms. JoAnn Kamuf Ward is the Deputy Director of the Human Rights in the U.S. Project. Ms. Ward focuses on promoting the use of a human rights framework to address inequality and social injustice domestically. Her work includes developing strategies to strengthen federal and local mechanisms for monitoring and enforcing human rights as a member of the Human Rights at Home Campaign, as well as assisting with the Institute s treaty implementation initiative and the Bringing Human Rights Home Lawyers Network. Ms. Ward is dedicated to advancing respect for human rights in the U.S. and abroad. Her writing, research and practical experience focus upon improving access to basic rights such as education and housing and increasing avenues for political participation. Ms. Ward worked as a fellow at Fordham Law School s Leitner Center for International Law and Justice, researching and writing about international mechanisms for monitoring and enforcing human and civil rights. Shelley White Professor Shelley White is an Assistant Professor of Public Health and Sociology, and Program Director of the Master of Public Health at Simmons College. An interdisciplinary scholar, Professor White is a committed to health and human rights. She teaches in the undergraduate sociology and public health programs, coordinated the Simmons World Challenge program in 2012-2013, and is the recipient of the 2013 Professor of the Year Award. Professor White s research focuses on the intersections of health and policy, inequalities, and political economy. She uses qualitative and mixed methods approaches to her research, and is informed by theories of knowledge and power, stratification, and social movements. She is also engaged in scholarship on teaching and learning and has held related positions with the Eastern Sociological Society and the American Sociological Association. Stan Willis Mr. Stan Willis is an attorney in the City of Chicago specializing in personal injury, criminal defense and federal rights cases. Most of his civil rights practice involves suits against police for acts of violence and civil abuse. He is a member of The National Conference of Black Lawyers, The Cook County Bar Association, and The National Lawyers Guild. He has been a faculty-lecturer for the annual civil rights seminar sponsored by the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education (IICLE), The Chicago Kent College of Law, and the American Bar Association in the area of Section 1983 Civil Rights Liability and Litigation. His recent work has included a July, 2014 Report to the United Nations Periodic Review of the United States criticizing the United States handling of the Burge Torture cases and urging a moratorium on lengthy segregation of inmates in United States Prisons, and an April, 2015, Report to the United Nations Committee To Eliminate Racial Discrimination raising the issue of racial discrimination against Black Communities as a result of massive public school closings and the privatization of those public schools.